Voting Rules:
You must vote for a 1st place and a 2nd Place. The 1st place vote will receive 2 points and the 2nd place vote will receive 1 point. The person with the most points will win. Using alts to vote will result in disqualifications. Remember to make it clear who you are voting for. You cannot vote for yourself.

2nd and 3rd were both really really close. I almost wish they’d give points out for 3rd place.

Anyways, now for a detailed game-by-game compliment and critique (in progress). Note, that I rated all games 5/5 simply for the sake of this contest and so they’d get more views and a decent rating, but, in my critiques, I’m going to give an appropriate rating so you guys can see sort of what I feel.

Oh, by the way, the line below is made of 80 underscores in case anybody wants to use it.
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Rainy Cloud – VBCPP
An interesting game, something I haven’t seen before. I loved the intro scene commentary. Especially the rhyme on the first line. It really gives us incentive to appreciate clouds, even when they do rain with no end (or, when they aren’t there and the sun is beating down).

I though the three meter system was great. And the display for the plants was great too, but in a sense, a bit too detailed. If the game had been longer, it would have been fine, but for something that short (and where time limit matters), I wish you had used graphics of some sort to show their contribution to the atmosphere rather than numbers. I did like the graphics of the trees and martian venus fly traps though! And I lol’d at the rock. I’m guessing alot of water went to the rock as people tried to water it to no avail.

Still, a good game, and the personal drawings were funny, and didn’t detract from the game. I’d rate it a 3.5/5.
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Coin Kid – HeroicHero

A decent game, and the art was great! You even went so far as to make the clouds look like weights, so you would know not to hit them. That’s the sort of implicit graphic design that makes games successful! The music you had in your game went really well with the game too! I loved that you included Dash, which I don’t see in many games like that.

However, there were a few things I could see in your game which would greatly improve it if added and/or changed. First of all, the instructions on the main page were really helpful. But, they need to be larger. I didn’t know about dash until I read those, and the first time I played your game I didn’t see them. So make them a bit bigger, or perhaps even better, suspend it in the sky after they click play.

Another thing I wished is that the money did something. I’m pretty sure you were going to implement it later, but I’d love it if it upgraded things or whatnot. Upgraded health, health regen, etc, would have made the game a blast where you could run into some things (thanks to your health) but not others. Still, it was a job well done for what you had. I only have one more critique – make the health increasers use a different sound than the coins =).

Overall, I would have rated the game a 3.5/5. The graphics and music really made it stand out!
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Sky Breakout – Just4Yoshi

I thought this game was pretty brilliant, using breakout like this. At first, it wasn’t very clear what it meant with the faded clouds, but eventually I got the knack of it, and it works brilliantly! The rising water definately adds a challenge. And being able to move your bumper up and down as well as side to side really helps clear the water so it doesn’t get too high. Overall, great use of mechanics in the game.

One thing I did wish though was that there were a greater variety of clouds. Perhaps a thundercloud that shocked you if you hit it and were right under it, or a cloud that when killed dealt damage to other clouds, or things like that. It would be great if you added in some special clouds of some sort to make it more intriguing! Then again, I didn’t play the game too far in, so I could have been missing something =/. If I was, I’d suggest introducing the mechanic earlier! After one level, it’s great to introduce something new =). And of course, also add in music! Music makes a game a ton better!

You received my 3rd place award, because your game was really great. You were very closely vying for 2nd too! Great job, especially for being your first game! I would have rated 4/5.
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The Flood – Senekis93

Wow! All I can say is this game is great! It doesn’t matter that you didn’t fit in the graphics, it was a great game, and the graphics weren’t half bad. You had wonderful level design, with some things that were actually a challenge to collect. So yeah, you could beat the level “to proceed”, but you could also go back to try and get all the coins. The rain graphics, the flood graphic, and the cloud background were excellent. And your menu system rocked too! And your music… your music was amazing. I don’t know if I can critique this game besides some of the hailguns shooting a bit too fast for my liking… an excellent job for the contest, overall.

I would rate a 4.5/5. ’Nuf said.
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Curious Gaming – Raindrop Melodies

A great combination of the theme and a popular style of game. Not to mention integrating the music genre into the game too. The game proceeded great, not going too slowly or too quickly. You were under pressure – but not under an insane amount of pressure which would cause you to panic. The flood moved quickly enough to make a challenge exist.

There were a few things that I would like to see in your game though. For one, I thought that the platforms sometimes were spread a bit too far apart. Combined with the raindrops (which I’ll mention next) this made it very easy to die quickly – perhaps include larger platforms, or just more platforms in the mid-beginning. The raindrops were another problem. Get hit by one and you were unlikely to recover. You need a better chance of recovery to get people to want to keep playing; kill them off immediately, and they’ll get discouraged. There was also one more thing I wished for. I wanted the gameplay to keep progressing, for new things to pop up. If you could include those, it would make your game really good!

Great work on what you did, you got my second place award for such a fun game, with a decent amount of balance! 4/5.
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Rain Demo Day – nutter66 and Skirmish:Rain – UnknownGuardian

Keep working on your stuff! I loved both of your graphics (umbrellas for nutter, mountains for UG), and your games have alot of potential. Update them, and I’d love to comment on them. Right now, I can’t really (alot of my comments are based on how fun they are), but when they are a bit further along, PM me and I’ll definitely check them out! =D

RainyCloud:
I liked it. It was simple, but reminded me a lot of that game Extinct: Are you Smarter Than A Plant? or something like that. Could’ve used sound, and the rain needed to fall way faster.

Coin Kid:
I just don’t know what you were trying to do with that. What I liked about it is that you didn’t have actual rain, but objects raining down. But the gameplay, though used rain, didn’t seem right to me.

Water Striver:
Hectic. I often couldn’t tell myself from the other water bugs. However, I liked your animations, and if I could vote for a third place, you’d be it.

SkyBreakout:
Although it seemed well enough done, breakout games seem too common for me.

The Flood:
Nice job, Senekis. I think it’s your best actual game as I liked it quite a bit. The reason I didn’t vote for it is because it didn’t incorporate rain as much as I’d have liked.

Rainy Cloud: Nice, but really short and easy.
Things that would improve it:
Way longer gameplay, more variety of species.
Some sort of minimap… something simple: grey for sleeping plants, green for healthy, yellow for thirsty.
A way to keep scrolling while there’s rain on the screen.
Enemies; maybe animals (or martians xD) that eat the trees and you can use lightning to scare them away.

Coin Kid: A generic… err… however that genre is called. Not much to say; the shop doesn’t work and I don’ think it’s related to rain in any way.

Water Striver: I loved the bug graphics and the implementation of the ripple. Increasing the speed, as well as adding the powerups really improved it (when compared to the earlier versions).
Ways to improve it:
Description of powerups… do all of them do the same? Also, the grey ones are a bit hard to spot.
And… if you mouse down, mouse out and release, you can get out of the screen.
Nice game, I think it has a lot of potential.

Sky Breakout: The idea is good, but I didn’t like the implementation much. Especially because of the paddle physics; it seems that the reflection angle is based on the area of the paddle that hits the ball, ignoring the paddle’s and ball’s vectors, which makes it hard for those used to these kind of games.
Another bad thing is the performance; please tell me those raindrops aren’t MovieClips. Anyway, it’s your first game, right? Not bad. keep learning. (:

Raindrop melodies: The game works, but I got bored pretty fast. A game that features a single level (launchers, avoiders, jumpers- or however this genre is called) must always include some sort of upgrades system where you can unlock new features, otherway the game becomes repetitive and there’s nothing to fight for; yes, I keep going up and up, and then what? Some upgrades would make it way better.
Another thing is the randomness of the raindrops; there are points where you can only reach a single platform, and it’s covered by raindrops, so in the end, getting to 100 or to 1,000 is a matter of luck. Of course, some level of randomness is required in these kind of games, but you should make sure that the player always has a way to win, either by adjusting the raindrops or by adding some powerups like… I don’t know, “Sunlight: clears the raindrops on the screen.” or “Umbrella: makes you immune to raindrops for 3 seconds”.

Rain Demo Day / Skirmish:Rain: Not much to say as they’re in an early development stage and there’s little to do.

Water Striver: I loved the bug graphics and the implementation of the ripple. Increasing the speed, as well as adding the powerups really improved it (when compared to the earlier versions).
Ways to improve it:
Description of powerups… do all of them do the same? Also, the grey ones are a bit hard to spot.
And… if you mouse down, mouse out and release, you can get out of the screen.
Nice game, I think it has a lot of potential.

Thanks! As for the powerups (I should have mentioned what they do), yellow increases your max health, red fills up your health by about a third, white increases your regeneration rate, and green increases your speed.

Hehe… perhaps I will increase the white one’s visibility. The thing is, regeneration tends to be a very strong skill… so I have to be careful not to make it too easy to get (or else you won’t ever die). Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to program in the score display… so no score comparing right now =(.

I’ll see if I can make your strider more obvious… I knew it was a problem (as the game started getting more busy), so I just need to do a better job at it =D.

Water Striver:
Hectic. I often couldn’t tell myself from the other water bugs. However, I liked your animations, and if I could vote for a third place, you’d be it.

Yay! I got the feeling I wanted! =D Hectic is perfect! I’ll definately improve how obvious you are (of course, not too much either to make it too easy ;-), in any case, I’ll have to test out a few things to see what works best).

Hehe… actually… the animations aren’t mine… they are part of this super nice free and open source ripple class. I posted it in the other thread, so if you want to use it, you can! I believe Senekis used it on his menu too. =D

Water Strider – (2 points) – I actually had alot of fun playing this one but it made me sad that i couldn’t die :(
The Flood – (1 point) – You did a really good job on this — especially in 10 days, but it made me rage quickly.

2 points for Raindrop Melodies, I think this was a great little game. The controls felt a bit heavy but onceyou get used to them its pretty fun to play.

1 point to Sky Breakout, although it almost missed out on that since most of the unique mechanics weren’t obvious when I played it. It needed more work on it, though.

Honorable mention to Coin Kid, which nearly got my second place vote except that I didn’t feel it kept to the theme closely enough. Although there were rainclouds to avoid, they could be replaced with weights or spikes or fat people or whatever the theme happened to be and the game would be the same.

First of all, I think all of the games entered have a lot of potential to become popular and super fun games if they are fleshed out just a bit more.

Rainy Cloud – VBCPP
Fun while it lasted. It indeed has a good, compelling concept behind it, but it is just too short and lacking in the story. I love the strategy involved and the idea of growing a planet back to health. I think it should be developed on a much larger scale though. This is a game that I’d be willing to sink several hours into if it’s done right.

Coin Kid – HeroicHero
Very cute and endearing. Although the gameplay is not all that original, the graphics and music are quite lovely. With a good upgrade system and possibly a time or money based difficulty increase, this will definitely be an awesome game. I also like the fact that you’ve taken creative liberties with the theme and made it rain coins.

Water Striver – TheAwsomeOpossum
This has a lot of sensory appeal. The graphics, the music, and the feel of the gameplay are all very relaxing and enticing. The only problem is that I have no idea what I’m doing. What am I, what are those colored things that I feel compelled to collect, why are there other creatures like me, why do they also go after the colored things but not collect them, and why does the rain hurt me?

Sky Breakout – just4yoshi
At first this game seems very bland, but the more I played it, the more subtle details I noticed that set it apart from other breakout games. The vertical movement, as mentioned before, the dissipating clouds, and the rising water level among other things make this quite a dynamic game. Mostly, though, I enjoyed the hidden real goal. At first, I thought it was to keep the ball bouncing while getting rid of the clouds, but later I realized the actual goal was to keep water from hitting the ground, which can ultimately be accomplished by eliminating the clouds, but more directly it can be done by just catching the water in the pan/paddle. Very nice!

The Flood – Senekis
Although the graphics are extremely appealing, and the difficulty increase from level to level is compelling, the gameplay is rather unoriginal and tedious. Jump from platform to platform, collect these things to complete the level, collect those things for higher score, and avoid the things being shot at you all in a timely manner. With even a couple more diverse objects in the levels, it would be much more interesting and unique.

Raindrop Melodies – CuriousGaming
The addictive gameplay makes this a strong entrant. The possibility to reach the end is constant incentive to keep playing, but a few things as I mentioned in the entry thread are holding this back for me: Something more melodic being created when the raindrops hit (even just making the horizontal positions correspond to notes in the pentatonic scale) would make it a lot more appealing. I think a few powerups here and there would suit it nicely too. Extra jump height for 10 seconds, a one-use shield, etc.

Rain Demo Day – nutter666
I am intrigued by this game, and I hope you add more to it, because it seems like you have quite an original concept in mind. The umbrella graphics are pretty sweet too.

Skirmish: Rain – UnknownGuardian
Good concept, although a little overdone with the Epic War series. I’d be greatly interested to see how you differentiate it and make it unique. You’ve set the stage for quite a number of possibilities.

Originally posted by orandze:Water Striver – TheAwsomeOpossum
This has a lot of sensory appeal. The graphics, the music, and the feel of the gameplay are all very relaxing and enticing. The only problem is that I have no idea what I’m doing. What am I, what are those colored things that I feel compelled to collect, why are there other creatures like me, why do they also go after the colored things but not collect them, and why does the rain hurt me?

Thanks! I am a bit surprised you like the music though – I put it in last minute =p. I guess I picked the right one =D. I wasn’t sure if the Asian feel to it would be good or bad for it.

Haha, and yes, I didn’t enter any instructions at that point… it was one of the detractors of doing basically nothing till last minute… so no menu or instructions or anything. It’s something I’m for sure going to fix (beyond just fixing some of the basic game mechanics).

In any case, essentially, the whole concept of the game is that you are a water strider avoiding raindrops (I’m assuming water striders don’t like being rained on). However, that’s not very fun just dodging raindrops. So I put in the ‘food’ object… that gives you a boost in a certain way. Yellows give 0.1 more max health… greens give 0.1 more max speed… whites give a bit better recovery… reds heal you 28.5% (1 / 3.5). Now, imho, it isn’t super fun like that, so I’m going to fix it so there are multiple goal objects on screen at once perhaps or something. And perhaps other enemies you have to avoid (I’m thinking tadpoles that have a taste for water striders or something). And I’m also thinking about slowing down the rain a bit. Becuase you can no longer dodge it when it comes down at 1/frame. And when you get even further, it accelerates even more lol.

In any case, let me explain why the AI doesn’t touch the food quickly… basically… I use an attraction algorithm… they turn twoards the food, and cut down their distance by percentage. In this way, they slow down as they approach the food (but they can still touch it if you give them a few seconds). In the beginning, this means grabbing the food is very easy, but as the game goes on, the hitbox for the food is larger and their max speed is greater. This means, they become better at getting food than you do – they react a ton quicker, and unless you are on your toes, you aren’t going to get it. Eventually, they will be getting all of the food as you won’t be fast enough to react (except when the wind blows strongly in one direction, in which case you’ll have an advantage because your smart enough to figure out where it appears at the top of the screen).

So yeah the AI is going to be into a bunch of improvement… I’m thinking about making them a bit less accurate as well… they already group up a ton (but it’s a lot better than before where they were on top of each other). If I stick multiple objects on the screen at once, it’ll be important that they don’t go all for the same object. But then again, I might not do this… so yeah. The other problem I need to fix is that if you collect things like you are supposed to, you can’t really die. I got to the point where it was like raining about 180 droplets/second, and I still wasn’t dying, and that shouldn’t happen. I need to be able to die to make it a challenge.

Another thing I wanted to add (but didn’t get the time) was hail and acid rain. Some different types of projectiles you have to dodge which have special effects appeals to me. But we’ll see if it fits in (let alone if I can find a proper graphic for “frost” on the surface of the water.

Rainy Cloud
Thanks for the input guys :P I didn’t finish the game as I had it planned out, so the comments about gameplay too short/simple/complicated for how short it is… were completely expected! :p

Coin Kid
Solid game mechanics, nice art. Would like to know what you had planned to put into the shop

Water Striver
Cool effects and obviously fits the theme very well. As stated already I couldn’t tell what the powerups do at all :P
Having you move slowly when moving against the wind makes sense, but took me awhile to figure out what was going on lol :P

Sky Breakout
I like brick breaker games where the bricks move :) And there is rain so +1. The rising water level sort of confused me.
I easily assumed that it was bad, and that catching the raindrops with the paddle would slow the water level.. but it seemed an arbitrary height that made you lose.
Once the water level was higher than my paddle I sort of assumed I could either let it go up really high, or at least as high as the lowest cloud.
Maybe a line or something to indicate where you would lose.

Edit:after reading the other comments I found out you can move the paddle up and down :P Is the max height related to the level where the water would kill you?
A cool update would be you losing once the water overflows the paddle.. except that once I found out you can move up and down I just stayed at the top anyway :P

The Flood
I beat all but the last level (because really?) and it is a solid idea. I like that the coins aren’t necessary but the ocd person will try to get them all anyway.
It was a bit too fast for me (both the guns and water level), I didn’t bother trying to get all the coins simply because I knew I’d die so many times it would stop being fun.
The fire effect was really cool, but I think it was pretty wasted with the main character only being a rectangle.

Raindrop Melodies
I liked the use of rain, although the drops are a little enormous? I also really wasn’t a fan of the gravity/jumping. I appreciate letting the user control how high up they want to jump, but it seemed like if I let it off a second too early he would only jump to 95% and be just short of the next platform. A little less precise, and stronger gravity, would have made it better.
The drops also push you a whole lot. I guess it makes sense since they’re so big, but I’d have prefered something like hitting a drop slows horizontal movement & reduces vertical or something like that, instead of being whacked by it. Especially when you’re standing on a platform, a raindrop shouldn’t be able to toss you aside like that!
I would also have liked to have some kind of background. The brick sides seemed like random stock images, if you made it look like you were climbing out of a sewer or something I think it would add to the game.

Rain Demo Day & Skirmish: Rain
I don’t know what I’mn supposed to do in either one of these, I guess thats why they’re listed as incomplete haha :P

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